The Melling sisters — like Alcott’s March sisters and Austen’s Bennetts — are four girls who become women during the course of Robin Klein's trilogy of novels. The Sky in Silver Lace is the most bittersweet of the three.

The 1998 film adaption of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp as Hunter S Thompson, introduced millions of new fans to the world of gonzo journalism.
Fear and Loathing LLCFebruary 12, 2017

Hunter S Thompson's 1971 book is a torpedo ride through some of the strangest scenes in American fact, or fiction. It's about greed, the souring of '60s idealism, the failings of journalism and much more.

The tale of a married woman who joins her lover in Paris, The Beauties and Furies is a modernist classic. Like Joyce's Ulysses, the action is concentrated in one city, but dreams are nightmarish in this city of night, not light.

One of the most famous attempted rapes in literature: the nymph Daphne turns into a tree to escape the god Apollo.
Apollo chasing Daphne, Cornelis de Vos, 1630. September 13, 2016

There are calls for Ovid's Metamorphoses to be taught with a trigger warning. This 15-book epic is a rollercoaster of a read, with moments of both delicious joy and abject depravity. Like much great art, it was not created to please.

Icelandic sagas are under-appreciated in the world of European literature.
Oscar Wergeland [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsAugust 14, 2016

Family feuds, love affairs, empire writing back to the motherland - the medieval Icelandic saga have it all. Though less known than other classics of European literature they richly deserve a place among the best.

William Etty’s Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed. The painting illustrates Herodotus’s version of the tale of Gyges.
Wikimedia CommonsMay 22, 2016

Herodotus' Histories has it all: tales of war, eyewitness travel writing, notes on flora and fauna and accounts of fantastic creatures such as winged snakes. His stories share a common humanity that speaks to us, 2500 years on.

It’s time to get to grips with this classic of world literature.
José María Pérez NuñezJanuary 4, 2016